Amazon Pushes Weight Watchers

Amazon.com just loves the diet industry - enough to start promoting a particular diet. To my surprise I received an email from Amazon. It's a rare occurance - as far as I knew I have never opted in to receive any email.

Because you have purchased diet and nutrition products from amazon.com, we are pleased to bring you Weight Watchers On-line....

It's diet season right now - and the competition is fierce. For Weight Watchers it seems that being the most visited diet site in 2005 is not enough. This is no slight on the Weight Watchers program - it is one of the most respected weight loss programs in history.

However, this feels very much like... spam. As it turns out, after digging deep (very deep) into the Amazon website I discovered a page with my "Customer Communication Preferences" - and apparently I was automatically opted-in to receive these kinds of emails.

Amazon likes diet books. It chose 3 of them in its 10 year anniversary hall of fame (alongside such esteemed authors as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis).

As for Weight Watchers - with a $50 million quarterly profit - I guess they can do what they want.